Dearest Fluffy: Off To War

Dearest Fluffy – Off To War

Adam D. Rice

Copyright © 2019 Adam D. Rice

All rights reserved.

Any similarities between this work and real life are a convenient coincidence.

DEDICATION

In memory of...

George Edward Rice, 79th Indiana Infantry

William A. Stark, 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery

Jackson Newkirk, 2nd Colorado Cavalry

Finley Lucky Underwood, Missouri Home Guard

CONTENTS

PREFACE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

EARLY ON

CHORES & HOBBIES

WOUNDS & WEATHER

PEANUTS

CAPTAIN GATH

LESSER PETS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PREFACE

Several years ago, I found a cache of documents in a dumpster formerly belonging to a strange family with a fondness for autobiographical writing. This volume contains a number of undated letters written during the U.S. Civil War by J.J. Hippolhite, a Union soldier, to a handful of animals on his family’s small yet densely-populated Indiana farm. The letters have been grouped and ordered within general categories where possible and left in a jumbled mess where necessary. They have also been heavily edited for ease of reading, overall clarity, punctuation, completeness, spelling, length, tone, continuity, and varied vocabulary.

~ Adam D. Rice, 2019

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The year was 1815. The extended Hippolhite tribe had resided in the United States (and, prior to that, the colonies) for an indeterminate period of time. Records fail us, because there aren’t any. Unlike many pioneer families, there’s no genealogical smoking gun in the form of an annotated family Bible, because this ragtag band of wannabe farmers couldn’t afford one, and they wouldn’t have known how to read it if they had. Not to make things too dramatic, but 1815 was the year everything changed—at least, for the Hippolhites. The War of 1812 had just concluded, and after several months when no one really knew whether it was still acceptable to shoot at British soldiers, most Americans finally heard the pleasant news—or unpleasant news, I suppose, depending on the state of their conscience—that the war was over. With the sovereign status of the country solidified, the Hippolhite clan, led by Old Abner Hippolhite—then around sixteen years old—decided to exchange one scrap of infertile floodplain for another. Thus began the Great Hippolhite Migration from the state of Kentucky to a place then known as the Indiana Territory which, after many petitions and letters were sent by settlers to people with old money names like Burton and Francis, was later shortened to Indiana. The Amish were on the move too. It’s possible they ran into each other during their travels, but again, historical records fail us like a pie-in-the-sky-kickback-in-the-pocket politician.

The family’s journey, although encompassing a relatively short distance, took nearly all of 1815 to complete. This was partly because there were few roads or highways crisscrossing the nation in that decade or several thereafter. All the Hippolhites had to guide them were the stars and a mountain man they’d generously paid to lead them who—surprise, surprise—didn’t actually know how to get anywhere. It would be easy to place all of the blame for the family’s travel setbacks on the lack of roads, canals, and sidewalks, but the real reason the Hippolhites’ trip dragged on and on can be found in the Animal Kingdom—specifically, panthers, mountain lions, porcupines, bears, wolves, poisonous snakes, regular snakes, sticks that looked sort of like snakes, and a smattering of lovesick territorial elk. Finally, sometime in mid-December, the family collapsed on a frosty scrap of ground and expressed a common refrain, Good enough.

The family didn’t bother to buy that land, however. The Hippolhites claimed they didn’t realize land in the Indiana Territory needed to be purchased. At least, that’s the kind of legal tripe they tried to peddle around the community when the actual owner of the land stumbled across the shabby settlement they’d established in the pasture where he dumped old stumps, boulders, and other things he found, rooting around in his fields. The man’s name is not known to us, but according to local lore, the Hippolhite family may have held him captive until he agreed to sell them that worthless stump graveyard for the measly price of being allowed to continue living.

The Hippolhites, now solidly established in what later became Boone County, lived through numerous natural disasters—well... most of them did. Their haphazard livestock operation became a thriving enterprise over the next thirty plus years. Upon Abner’s will-less death in 1849, the financial status of the Hippolhite family became known to the public. It turns out, the 1840s had been good to the Hippolhites. During this period, they’d become the second-richest settlers in the entire Sugar Creek Delta. As a result, everyone started shacking up with Hippolhites, and many loveless, greed-based marriages ensued. Some of the Hippolhites left the area to find their fortune elsewhere after they’d embarrassingly blown through their share of Abner’s back at home.

Several questions regarding Abner’s riches have remained unanswered all these years—chief among them, precisely how he came by them. Generally, those expressing the loudest and sourest concern were members of local charities who didn’t appreciate getting stiffed in Abner’s nonexistent will. Those most blessed by Abner’s good luck, good investments, good saving habits, mafia-like strongman tactics, or downright criminal activity—none or all of these may have actually applied—were silent regarding the source of their enrichment. It could have involved pirates, but I don’t care to explain the reasoning behind that theory, at least not now and not with a letter.

This is where a young boy by the name of Jammes Jeoromo J.J. Hippolhite (pronounced jammies jay-oh-row-mo) comes into the daguerreotype. In 1849, at the time of Abner’s death, J.J. was a young boy who was entitled to a share of his Grandpa’s savings. However, his parents were of the opinion, What’s his, is ours, and they left the area soon after. J.J. was then the tender age of eleven, so, basically, an adult. In those days, an eleven-year-old could do anything they put their mind to, because, that way, they could pay for their own food—which was often scarce—and maintain their own balance of credit at the local dry goods store. It was a different era. J.J.’s spotty schoolhouse education is believed to have ended around this time.

I wasn’t able to determine whether J.J.’s parents, Davis and Geraldine, left him with extended family members out of pure or just partial neglect. They provided a small amount of money to ensure he was looked after, known to most people as a bribe. It’s not known whether J.J. ever benefited from said bribe. Soon after leaving the Hippolhite haven, J.J.’s parents were involved in a terrible accident, but they were alright. They weren’t so lucky the following winter when they both developed a cough that turned into something much worse—bankruptcy. From there, the couple’s affairs spiraled out of control, and their marriage dissolved following scandalous, widely-reported divorce proceedings in Missouri that drug on for weeks. At the time, some accused the local court’s elderly Judge Landiss of delaying his verdict in order to keep the Hippolhite’s steady stream of salacious stories flowing. One period account went so far as to mention that Landiss was frequently heard to say, Tell the one about the candlestick again, so it’s possible the largely unsubstantiated claim of an undue divorce delay had its merits. We do know for certain that the Hippolhite’s divorce was the only case on the judge’s docket that year, throwing another load of anecdotal fuel on the fire. After the divorce, J.J.’s parents faded into destitute obscurity.

Back in Indiana, J.J. was raised by Abner’s much older brother, Dottus Hippolhite. Dottus was nearly blind, and J.J. served as his caretaker for many years. When most of the clan had fled their small scrap of land in favor of nice houses that hadn’t been built crooked, J.J. was left to do most of the farm work himself. At an early age, J.J. developed an interest in learning everything he could about animals, usually by trying to pet them and carry them around against their wishes. He received many gruesome injuries as a result, but though they may have cut his flesh, those wild animals could not dampen little J.J.’s spirits.

According to family accounts, J.J. was childless, although I suppose we can’t be sure about that. Instead of caring for a large brood of children—the ones nobody’s entirely sure he never had, J.J. spent his time cultivating a benevolent menagerie of animals on the Hippolhite homestead. It wasn’t the sort of menagerie that’s actually just a private zoo where animals are cooped up in tiny cages, exposed to the elements, and people pay to get in, discretely hoping to see the animals good-naturedly lash out at—but not seriously hurt, of course—the zookeepers. No, animals apparently wanted to live on J.J.’s farm, because they were fed and cared for... and, potentially, because he resorted to emotional blackmail to get them to stay. The animals became like family to J.J., and whether he liked it or not—my money’s on the second one, they became great-uncle Dottus’ family too.

The finer points of J.J.’s life story have been lost, but tales of his obsession with caring for animals have been passed down within the family, as evidenced by several biographical essays written about him for grade school projects about obscure family members. I’ll spare you the poorly-spelled projects and sketches. The conclusions were the same. J.J. was a man who dedicated his life to helping others, and those others almost always happened to be animals, although, based on family sentiment, if the need arose, J.J. would’ve probably stepped in to assist a neighbor... if they had a decent rapport.

J.J.’s surviving Civil War letters were sent to a handful of the animals residing at his home in rural Boone County. Great-uncle Dottus’ blindness made sending letters to him a non-starter. However, it’s entirely possible that J.J. did mail letters to Dottus, and at some point, Dottus or a member of the larger Hippolhite family chose to destroy or hide them really well. It’s also possible that J.J. acted deliberately in sending letters exclusively to his animals. Exactly how or who he thought would read the letters is not known. Those details have also been lost to history.

The specifics of J.J.’s time in the military have not as of yet been found. It’s possible he enlisted under an obfuscation of his name. His letters offer a brief and one-way-glass-paned window into the details of his life and service. Research has not revealed much about his later life—most notably, whether or not he had one. Around 1870, the Hippolhite farm changed hands and became the sole property of J.J.’s cousin, Lyles Hippolhite.

I hope this research is satisfactory. Regardless, I’m billing you for expenses incurred along with my standard rate. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a new Guy Lombardo record that’s calling my name and a hat that needs brushing.